Collecting Our Selves: An Interdisciplinary Service-Learning Project

This three-semester service-learning project was an interdisciplinary effort between Freshman Composition classes, two upper division Psychology classes, and the After Breast Cancer support group in Utica, NY. Psychology students used narratives collected through interviews with members of the support group to practice case study and resiliency theory analysis. Students in composition classes began the course with a paper that combined narration, description, and reflection to recall a medical event from the past and how it altered them. For their final papers, students reflected on the experience of interviewing breast cancer survivors to determine the survivors' resilient traits and come to a conclusion about the value of illness narratives for speakers and listeners. The project has resulted in an anthology of thirteen narratives titled Voices of Resilience: Breast Cancer Narratives from the Mohawk Valley.